Cirrus@Austlit

'A Short History of Australian Literature fills a gap in study materials for Indian readers interested in a country that shares a lot of colonial history, many sporting ties, and increasing diasporic connections. Australia is, however, a unique land that has developed its own idioms, cultural mix, and literature. This book introduces the major writers across two centuries, places them in historical contexts of political and social change, and provides a glossary of local usages and a list of reference materials. It blends comprehensive coverage with selective attention to works so readers can ‘get the feel’ of a nation’s creative spirit. A Short History of Australian Literature will be an indispensable companion to anyone interested in Australian studies.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Australian government has recently received the report of a Royal Commission into the nation’s management of aged care. This followed media scandals about physical and sexual abuse, neglect and inadequate controls during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though all discussion occurred within a national context, this chapter shows that the aged-care ‘industry’ is a space of transnational flows, both in the export of business and models and in the internal movements of staff who are frequently unskilled immigrant labour. The chapter notes some Australian-Indian links and looks at how ‘the old folks’ home’ as heterotopic space has been represented in Australian literature.'

Source: Abstract.

'A multi-disciplinary set of studies (Humanities and Social Sciences) of transnational flows and influences and themes connecting India and Australia, from mining and Aboriginal politics to colonial botanical collections to the spread of the ghazal form in poetry. It results from collaborations between Indian and Australian scholars and includes a theoretical overview of the transnational in the editors' introductory chapter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Grouping sets of novels and stories to elucidate the functions of key tropes in Jones’s fiction, Dalziell covers the writer’s entire output up to 2020. With recourse to the novelist’s essays and interviews, chapters provide close readings of weather, time, reading and writing, image and modernity. The interest overall is to show how unstable oscillations in the stories serve to express an idea of ethical relations as tentative constructions of community aware of their limitations, both in life and literature.' (Publication abstract)

'Thomas Keneally is known as a best-selling novelist and public figure in his Australian homeland and has also managed a transnational career. He is, however, something of a conundrum in being regularly disparaged by critics and often failing to meet expectations of sales. ‘Thomas Keneally’s Career and the Literary Machine’ explains some of the reasons behind such disparities, focusing in part on his deliberate transition from high-style modernist to ‘journeyman’ entertainer while continuing to write across both modes.

'Reactions to this shift have been framed by critical and cultural investments, and by an idea of the literary career common to both high literary and popular taste. This study examines the complex network that is a career, considering personality traits, authorial agency, agents, editors and shifts in publishing from colonial control to multinational corporations. As such, the study moves across and beyond conventional literary biography and literary history, incorporating aspects of book history and celebrity studies.

'Of Indian Origin is a dazzling collection of short stories and poetry by Australian writers of Indian origin. Cultures collide as children encounter racism in the playgrounds of Canberra, migrant women scrounge for a living nursing Melbourne's elderly, and a young author moves to a strange and unfamiliar country where she suffers from dreamlessness. These searing works bring new meaning to the field of ‘Asian-Australian writing’ and new perspectives on the Indian diasporic experience. Though the field of Indian-Australian writing is still small, this vibrant mix of emerging and established writers shows it is by no means a homogenous entity. Bold, experimental and wildly original, Of Indian Origin unapologetically tackles issues of home and provides a unique overview of how Indian-Australian literary writing has developed over half a century.'  (Publication summary)

'It has been a source of wonder to me how the Netherlands has kept publishing sometimes quite arcane scholarly works when everywhere else has succumbed to market forces and multinational mergers. Despite (science-based) research measurements and other publishers’ reluctance to accept collections of conference papers, Rodopi, for some decades now, has managed to put out edited collections of literary studies grouped under the ‘Commonwealth’ or ‘postcolonial’ label, the best known being the ‘Cross/Cultures’ series. Some of its volumes have been influential in shifting critical focus and introducing new writing to the world.' 

'The Oxford History of the Novel in English is a 12-volume series presenting a comprehensive, global, and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written by a large, international team of scholars. The series is concerned with novels as a whole, not just the 'literary' novel, and each volume includes chapters on the processes of production, distribution and reception, and on popular fiction and the fictional sub-genres, as well as outlining the work of major novelists, movements and tendencies.

'This volume offers a comprehensive account of the production of English language novels and related prose fiction since 1950 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. After the Second World War, the rise of cultural nationalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and movements towards independence in the Pacific islands, together with the turn toward multiculturalism and transnationalism in the postcolonial world, has called into question the standard national frames for literary history. This has resulted in an increasing recognition of formerly marginalised peoples and a repositioning of these national literatures in a world literary context. This multi-authored volume explores the implications of such radical change through its focus on the novel and the short story, which model the crises in evolving narratives of nationhood and the reinvention of postcolonial identities. The constant interplay between national and regional specificity and transnational linkages is mirrored in the structure of this volume, where parallel sections on national literatures are situated within a broadly inclusive comparative framework. Shifting socio-political and cultural contexts and their effects on novels and novelists, together with shifts in literary genres (realism, modernism, the Gothic, postmodernism) are traced across these different regions. Attention is given not only to major authors but also to Indigenous and multicultural fiction, children's and young adult novels, and popular fiction. A significant feature of this volume is its extensive treatment of the novel in the South Pacific. Chapters on book publishing, critical reception, and literary histories for all four areas are included in this innovative presentation of a TransPacific postcolonial history of the novel.' (Publication summary)